Two newsrooms and the daily reinvention of journalism

Abstract

This paper is the result of an ethnographic study conducted on one of the most important Spanish newspapers, the La Vanguardia in its digital version, the lavanguardia.com, and on diariodepernambuco.com, the digital version of the oldest circulation newspaper in Latin America, the Diario de Pernambuco, in Recife (PE). This article aims to analyze how the relationship between journalists and what we call the potent audience has caused complex changes to the way journalism is conducted, affecting both the professionals and the news production. It also reflects on new roles taken on by journalists who now perform both journalistic and marketing assignments, which has changed the routine in newsrooms and raised important questions about what the values are that guide journalists in selection processes, news gathering and editing in a post-social media world.